Welcome to my blog

This is my diary blog which I started when I retired from the Civil Service in April 2010. I like to include some of the things that I see and do with as many photographs as possible. Thank you for visiting my blog I hope you enjoyed it and will return to see what I have been doing. Or you could always join and be one of my followers.

If you would like to use one of my photographs then please ask me first, as they are all subject to copyright.

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Monday, 28 March 2011

The Olympics are coming to London in 2012, less than 500 days away. A countdown clock was uncovered in Trafalgar Square but it did stop working for awhile, but it is now working again. I took a couple photographs just to prove it is working again. I am sure I will be covering the Olympics at a later date in my blog.

Sunday, 27 March 2011

On Thursday I had a day trip into London, for a golf lesson, I will not bother to go into too many details about the lesson as the tutor did not impress me in the slightest with his attitude or lack of people skills. So moving on I went to Kensington Garden, it was a lovely sunny warm day and I had a picnic in the park.

I wanted to find the Peter Pan statue, which I did.

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I then saw Anish Kapoor's Sky Mirror Sculpture. I did have to google to find out what this was.

There were loads of swans but also saw a heron on the Serpentine.

Came across the bandstand and I thought this made quite a good picture.

Saturday, 26 March 2011

The fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square has different statues and displays which are changed regularly, the current item is a ship in a bottle. It is a large ship in a large bottle and I think is it looks really cool.

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

This is the penultimate week of our photograph course and were taking some still life photos. We had a loads of different items to photograph and the use of lights too. Here are some of my efforts and the rest are on my flickr photostream.

Last week the photos I took during the lesson where wiped from my memory card but fortunately they were still on the computer at the college (and if they had disappeared the tutor Mark had saved them for me on a memory stick - thank you Mark). Here they are, railway bridges and trains.

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

On Sunday I did a trip to Hampton Court Palace to take some photographs. It is pretty easy to get to the Palace, just a couple of buses.

The last time I went to the Palace, on New Years Eve, I didn't go in but this time I went around the Palace and the Gardens. I didn't take the audio tour or read all the information in the rooms it was purely a visit to take some photographs.

It was a grey, dull and damp day so there were not too many visitors around which mean not too many people in my pictures.

Saturday, 12 March 2011

Val and I went to the Ideal Home Exhibition at Earls Court yesterday. I have not been to this exhibition for many many years and when I found out it cost £18.00 to get in I nearly didn't go this year. But my friend Val bought a magazine which was giving away complimentary tickets, so she bought 2 copies of the magazine which was a great deal cheaper than the entrance fee.

I did forget to take my camera with me so no photos of the exhibition but have included below photos of my purchases. Having been told by a few people not to buy too many gadgets, which never seem to work once you get them home, I was quite good and only bought a wooden chopping (cheese board) and a pair of purple MBT's at bargain price.

Tuesday, 8 March 2011

Oops I appear to have missed out week 6 of my photography course so I have combined week 6 and 7. In Week 6 we looked at metering mode. This is to do with light and choosing the correct lighting mode for the subject and lighting available.

Below are the metering modes on my camera and left to right they are:-Evaluative, Partial, Spot and Centre-Weighted

I don't have any photo examples using these, but most the time my camera is on Evaluative, but if I wanted to have the light mainly in the middle of the photo then I would move to partial or spot. This is something I need to practice to get used to it.

This week (week 7) we went outside to take some pictures. There is a walkway near the college with trains, cars running underneath, plus it was a beautiful sunny day. We took loads of photos and I down loaded onto the computer at college and appear to have wiped them off my memory card. Grrrrrrr. I will hopefully get them onto a memory stick next week and will add them to the blog.

On the way home while waiting for the train I did manage a couple of photos of the street and got a bus on the move.

The secret is getting your frying pan very hot with oil then pour off the oil to leave just a very small amount coating the base. then not too much batter about a couple of tablespoons full. The first pancake is usually unsuccessful because the pan is not really hot enough but after that the pancakes will get better.

Friday, 4 March 2011

I finished another of James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge books last night - the book was called Run for your Life. The main character is Detective Michael Bennett and is the second book of this Detectives series. I have not been able to find the first book in the series but the third book which I finished recently, called Worst Case was really good - see my entry http://lynnes-diary.blogspot.com/2011/02/book-worst-case.html This book is about a murderer (as expected), but it is a vigilante killer this time, who appears to be killing randomly but you find out the connection in the end. It was a good book but not as good as the Worst Case.

The next book in this series is out, it is called "Tick Tock" I look forward to reading that one.